Costa Concordia Salvage: Parbuckling Makes Progress As Ship is Freed from Reef

The Costa Concordia salvage project has begun and engineers have already freed the ship from the reef.

Using a complex system of pulleys and counterweights, crews started the process of parbuckling the ship which capsized on a Tuscan reef in 2012. The process has never been attempted with such a large ship. It got off to a later start on Monday morning. The process began at 9 a.m. local time, three hours late, but progress has been made, the Associated Press reports.

Engineers were able to remove the 952-foot-long vessel from the reef on which it was resting. It took them three hours just to get the boat to move. After 6,000 tons of force was applied, engineer Sergio Girotto says they could see the boat detach from the reef through underwater cameras. No bodies were spotted in the early process. Two bodies of the 32 who died were never recovered.

An early morning storm had pushed a floating command room center away from the wreckage, which is why the salvage got a late start. From the command center, engineers are using remote controls to guide the system of pulleys, counterweights and chains under the vessel to try to free it from the rocky reef just outside Giglio Island's harbor.

Engineers are trying to raise the boat by at least 65 degrees so it can be vertical and can be towed more easily.

This process is known as parbuckling in nautical terms and is a proven method to raise capsized boats, but the Costa Concordia is a huge project. The USS Oklahoma may have been parbuckled by the U.S. military in 1943 after it was attacked in Pearl Harbor, but the 115,000-ton Costa Concordia is an even bigger undertaking than the military vessel.

Girotta says it should only take a few hours for bystanders to notice real improvement in the salvage process. The first few hours are the most important as pieces of granite seabed are embedded into the submerged side of the hull, which divers haven't been able to inspect.

Engineers believe the whole process will take 10 to 12 hours to complete.